Welcome to
the latest edition of Genius News, a monthly newsletter based on the world's
liveliest email forum: Genius-L, now incorporating material from
the world's most intelligent web forum, Genius Forum. Genius-L and Genius Forum are
forums dedicated to the nature of genius, wisdom and Ultimate
Reality, to the total annihilation of false values and the
femininity in all of us. That is to say, they are
realms intended solely for those who value consciousness.

The one who is a good example to
others is often not the one who speaks
eloquently in public. He may not be knowledgeable. He may
not be clear eyed and fearless. Few will see him as a
model for perfection.

We people prefer the person of talent: the sportsperson,
the businessperson, the musician, the artist. For these
not only have the regular attachments, but have some
other-worldly power behind them as well. We adore what we
feel is perfect for us.

Unfortunately, skill in any activity, be it poetry,
sport, or speaking, is a result of much practice, and
such practice has a cost: the cost is God. Any form of
success that comes before a strong familiarity with the
Infinite has been developed, boosts the ego to a level
beyond control. From this position one is lost.

The true man of wisdom turns his back on talent: he is unbound.
He loathes attachment as he would an unnecessary burden.
However, old habits die hard, and the spiritual man
suffers because of his wisdom. His suffering and
insecurity often make him a poor and shaky public speaker.
He spends so much time thinking of God, when it comes
time to speak . . . he has forgotten how. When he does
manage a word or two he doesn't speak kindly, so few hear
him.

However, the spiritual man is insecure only at first. He
gets better as he learns to swim more easily in the sea
of the Infinite. When he finally learns to stop swimming
and float, his ego dissolves completely. Having
eliminated the cause of suffering, his security is
transcendent. Now, and only now, can he begin to perfect
all the skills necessary to help others in even better
ways than he already has. Now he has the spiritual
strength to do intellectually demanding things without
losing concentration on God, without becoming absorbed in
what he is doing, and in the world. Any activity that is
without the transcendent strength, inner-quiet, and peace
that comes from a wisdom of the Infinite, is performed by
a deluded mind. Such banal activity ignores Truth and
buries oneself and others deeper into samsara and its
hells.

It is not worth
the effort trying to justify such blind and wreckless activity;
first learn to see, then you are free to be as active as you like.

I beg you, if you want to give your species something of lasting
value, then do not seek to become a skillful speaker. The best
way to teach is to be an example. Show others the correct
priorities by the way you live your life. Such a teaching,
without words, is a thousand times more powerful than anything
eloquence can produce.

Now imagine the awesome power of the teachings of one who, living
a truthful life, develops all the verbal skills as well!

Even so, no matter the spiritual man's wisdom or teaching skills,
he will always be hated. When relaxed and eloquent he will be
hated for what he says; when nervous with God induced insecurity,
he will be hated both for what he says, and for the
uneasy way he says it.

All this the spiritual man takes in his stride, which spans
entire universes.

- Perfection -

As
important and significant an attainment as enlightenment is, it
is only the beginning of the real story for the spiritual
aspirant. Perfection is his ultimate goal. So, what
is this perfection and how does one attain to it? Is such a
thing even possible? In the following dialogue the notion
of perfection is examined, and, hopefully, somewhat explained:

Clinton: David, you're attached to non-attachment.
Aren't you?

David Quinn: To the degree I am not perfect, yes.

Tony: We cannot be sure exactly what
you mean by "perfect", but assume it means something
like deliverance, moksha, realization.

David Quinn: Along those lines. Beyond all
delusion. Full, uninterrupted consciousness of Ultimate Reality.

Tony: But it must be pointed out that
to the "degree" you are not perfect, anything you may
believe about such a state is pure fantasy and conjecture.

David Quinn: It is important to distinguish
"perfection" (uninterrupted awareness of Ultimate
Reality) and "enlightenment" (temporary awareness of
Ultimate Reality). A person may be enlightened, but not yet
perfect. He is enlightened in the sense that his intellectual
understanding of Reality is flawless and he has learnt the
special knack of opening his mind to its fundamental nature. But
he isn't perfect because he is unable to remain in this
enlightened consciousness indefinitely and repeatedly slips back
into (subtle forms of ) delusion.

Enlightenment is essentially a temporary form of perfection and
the means by which the imperfect person can gain a sound
understanding of perfection.

Tony: Assuming, for the sake of discussion,
we accept this formulation despite its unclarity, then falling
away from perfection necessarily implies a lack. At best, this
lack means you will leave out something essential (otherwise one
would never leave the "perfect" state), and more likely
you will need to resort to an imperfect (by defintion) memory of
the "perfect" state -- delusion is delusion, no matter
how "subtle" your own delusions are.

David Quinn: Agreed. On the other hand, the
attainment of realization enables one to gain a flawless
understanding of perfection, even if only for a short time,
which, in turn, provides one with an understanding of the correct
path to perfection. So even though the slip back into delusion re-introduces
errors into one's understanding, one is still left with the
knowledge of the general direction to perfection. While this
knowledge will be flawed to some degree, it is good enough to
point one in the right direction and enable genuine advances to
be made . And then, as time goes on, further experiences of
enlightement will refine one's understanding even more.

Tony: Actually, from a practical point of
view, the more "subtle" a delusion is, the more
difficult it is to recognize and eradicate it (the very
definition of subtle - "difficult to detect or grasp by the
mind").

David Quinn: It's subtle in the sense that one slips
back into delusion imperceptably without even knowing it. It's
only at a later date that one realizes what has happened. But
once you realize what has happened, it is easy enough to
transcend these subtle delusions once more, because, being an
enlightened person, one has mastered the knack of entering
enlightenment at will.

Tony: Also, we are uncomfortable with your
claim that "perfection" is the "Full,
uninterrupted consciousness of Ultimate Reality."

This sounds dualistic -- someone is conscious of ultimate reality
-- obviously a metaphysical impossibility. It may be a little
more accurate to consider it as the realization, or
understanding, of the Whole (Absolute).

David Quinn: It may be described in this way, but it
would depend on what exactly it is referring to. Words don't
really amount to much if the understanding isn't there. From my
point of view, there is no essential difffernce between "being
conscious of Ultimate Reality" and "realization of the
Whole". One cannot understand the Whole without
understanding its basic nature, and vice versa.

Tony: That still sounds limiting. Ultimate
reality, as infinite, is beyond any essence.

David Quinn: Ultimate Reality is limited by
definition. It is limited by the fact that it isn't ultimate
falseness, for example. Having said that, I agree that Ultimate
Reality isn't an essence. It is beyond all form and thus it is
beyond all essence. Still, one has to use words if one wishes to
talk about it (Ultimate Reality), and it's fair enough to say
that it constitutes the essence of Nature (meaning that it goes
to the heart of everything that exists in Nature) - so long as
one keeps in mind that, yes, Ultimate Reality doesn't actually
constitute an essence.

Jim: But like you said perfect would mean
never being imperfect. Therefore either it isn't a requirement of
enlightenment or once you have conceived perfection there can't
be any improvement to enlightenment.

David Quinn: Well, it is impossible to become
perfect without first being enlightened. Perfection is too
profound for the ordinary mind to grasp. You need to leave behind
the many conventional and false mental frameworks that overwhelm
the ordinary person before you can discern its essence. That is,
you need the vision and understanding of enlightenment.

The difficult thing about the spiritual path isn't so much the
conceiving of perfection (which is relatively easy), but the
process of bringing every aspect of one's existence into
conformity with it. We have millions of years of evolution
programmed into us that is incompatible with perfection and it is
a long, hard slog to overpower this programming. We didn't evolve
to be spiritual beings. We evolved to be emotional, egotistical
beings who love nothing more than a bunch of attachments to
protect and distract us.

Jim: In either case, I feel that is not
enlightenment as we have to grow to enlightenment which I
personally feel never stops.

David Quinn: The only thing that never stops is
Nature itself. Everything else is impermanent, including delusion
and imperfection.

Jim: There can't be a limit to enlightenment
if it is infinite and can never be fully attained.

David Quinn: Enlightenment isn't infinite. Only
Nature is infinite. Granted, it is through enlightenment that we
become one with the infinity of Nature, but the actual state of
enlightenment is finite in terms of time (it begins and ends in
time) and space (it is confined to enlightened people).

Jim: An alternate reality would still be a
term of continued enlightenment. Delusion is still a path to
enlightenment even if it be a round about way. We all have a
degree of ilusionment if not for any other reason then to imagine
someone sitting on the side of this terminal squatting in the
outback reading our attempt of enlightenment.

David Quinn: There needn't be any illusion here. For
example, I'm fully cognizant of the fact that I can never know
whether other people really exist and are conscious. It's
something that I can't prove or disprove with absolute certainty.
So I treat it as a "provisional truth"- that is, as a
plausible theory that could well be misguided. There is a lot of
evidence to suggest that other people exist, but not enough to
make it incontrovertible. The person who understands this point
is not under any illusion regarding this matter.

So in short, I disagree that we are eternally condemned to being
trapped in illusion. We can, via the process of reasoning
correctly, free ourselves from all illusion, which is what I call
perfection.

Tony: So, what sort of process is "perfection"?

David Quinn: The process of being perfectly in tune
with Ultimate Reality in all aspects of one's existence. To be
beyond all possibility of slipping into delusion. The perfect
person is perfectly aligned to the flow of Nature. He is utterly
transparant in this regard. Not one part of him is at odds with
it.

Tony: If it were simply a matter of
ratiocination, couldn't one simply reason one's way to it?

David Quinn: One can certainly reason one's way into
enlightenment (temporary perfection), but the path to perfection
(permanent enlightenment) is more a matter of desire and will
than reason. This is not to say that reason is unimportant in
this matter. On the contrary, it is vital. But without a strong
will, it becomes limited.

Tony: And how does an "experience"
arise?

David Quinn: The experience of enlightenment, you
mean? It arises when one's intellectual understanding of Reality
loses its last remaining flaws and reaches perfection.

Tony: Are you implying that "perfection"
is more psychological than logical?

David Quinn: A combination of the two. Some people
are very logical in their thought-processes and yet have limited
vision due to psychological reasons - most academics, for example.
A person is in a position to reach enlightenment when he has the
psychological desire to understand what is ultimately true in
life and is prepared to give his reason free reign. This, of
course, is an exceedingly rare occurance.

Tony: How do you realize your delusion? Is
that a psychological or biological process, an intuition, a
matter of good fortune, or what? Obviously, unless you become
aware of the delusion, you cannot will enlightenment.

David Quinn: You realize it through the use of
memory. You remember the existence of enlightenment and, through
this, you become aware that you are not there. You then
automatically recall the knowledge of how to re-enter
enlightenment.

Observations from Soren
Kierkegaard

(taken from
"Parables of Kierkegaard")

It happened that a fire broke out
backstage in a theater. The clown came out to inform
the public. They thought it was just a jest and applauded.
He repeated his warning, they shouted even louder. So
I think that the world will come to an end amid general applause
from all the wits, who believe that it is a joke.

The gods were bored, and so they
created man. Adam was bored because he was alone, and so Eve was
created. From that moment on, boredom entered the world and
increased in proportion to the increase of the population.
Adam was bored alone; then Adam and Even were bored together;
then Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel were bored en famille;
then the population of the world increased and the people were
bored en masse. To divert themselves they
conceived the idea of constructing a tower high enough to reach
the heavens. This idea is itself as boring as the tower was
high, and constitutes a terrible proof of how boredom gained the
upper hand.....

A thinker erects an immense building, a system,
a system which embraces the whole of existence and world-history,
etc - and if we contemplate his personal life, we discover to our
astonishment this terrible and ludicrous fact, that he himself
personally does not live in this immense high-vaulted palace, but
in a barn alongside of it, or in a dog-kennel, or at most the
porter's lodge. If one were to take the liberty of
calling his attention to this by a single word, he would be
offended. For he has no fear of being under a
delusion, if only he can get the system completed .........by
means of the delusion.

They say that love makes blind, and by this
they explain the phenomenon. In case a man going into
a dark room to fetch something were to reply to my advice that he
carry a light by saying, "The thing I am seeking is only a
trifle, therefore I carry no light" - ah, then I could
understand him perfectly. On the other hand, when the
same man takes me aside and confides in me in a mysterious manner
that the thing he went to fetch was of the utmost importance, and
therefore he could do it blindly - ah, I wonder how my poor
mortal head might be able to follow the high flight of his speech.
Even if for fear of offending him I might refrain from laughter,
as soon as his back was turned I could not help laughing.
But at love nobody laughs.

Is knowledge changed when it is
applied? - Let us imagine a pilot, and assume that he had passed
every examination with distinction, but that he had not as yet
been at sea. Imagine him in a storm; he knows
everything he ought to do, but he has not known how terror grips
the seafarer when the stars are lost in the blackness of night;
he has not known the sense of impotence that comes when the pilot
sees the wheel in his hand become a plaything for the waves; he
has not known how the blood rushes to the head when one tries to
make calculations at such a moment; in short, he has no
conception of the change that takes place when he has to apply
his knowledge .......

A king sometimes has a royal
theater reserved for himself, but the difference which here
exludes the ordinary citizen is accidental. It is
otherwise when we speak of God and the royal theater He has for
Himself. The ethical development of the individual
constitutes the little private theater where God is indeed a
spectator, but where the individual is also a spectator from time
to time, although essentially he is an actor, whose task is not
to deceive but to reveal, just as all ethical development
consists of becoming more apparent before God.

Editorial Comments and
story titles by Dan Rowden

- Aids
and Virgins -

London Daily Telegraph, 11-11-01

Sexual assaults by
adults against children in South Africa have almost doubled in
two years, prompted probably, say officials, by a growing belief
in the countryside that having sex with a virgin will cure an HIV-positive
man. According to a health official in Durban: "We have no
idea where this idea has come from, but it has been around for a
few years and has certainly taken hold," especially in view
of the country's sharp increase in AIDS cases. The country was
stunned in early November when six men, attempting to "protect"
themselves, were charged with the rape of a baby.

Comment: This story is a graphic example
of the suffering that is caused in the world by ignorance and
superstition. No good can ever come of either. That people will
do whatever it takes to protect themselves from perceived danger,
arising from irrational thoughts, is one of the more salient
features of the history of the religious mentality. And
yet, the world is still more inclined to encourage superstition
than reason. Our perceived right to bring about the
conditions of suffering seemingly outweighs our desire to
alleviate them.

- And
they call them "intelligence" agencies -

The Times (London), 11-11-01

The FBI has recently inquired of
several psychics who had worked in the past with U.S.
intelligence as "remote viewers," hoping that they
would be able to foresee terrorist attacks, according to a
November report in The Times of London. The federal government
had a long-running remote-viewing program, run by California's
Stanford Research Institute, until it was shut down in 1995.

Comment:
It makes you wonder why
anyone would be surprised that any serious failure of American
security and intelligence agencies might occur when you see
stories like this one. It also does little to evoke
confidence is said agencies.

- Going
Potty over Harry -

BERLIN (Reuters)

Wednesday November 21 7:44 AM ET

Politician Says Harry
Potter Could Harm Small Kids

The Harry Potter blockbuster about an English boy wizard could be
bad for small children, a German conservative politician warned
Tuesday.

"The Harry Potter film is concerned with the occult and
black magic and I don't think that it is a suitable topic for
children under 10 years old," Benno Zierer, a Christian
Social Union MP, told Reuters Television.

"It is not a fairy tale and it could have negative
influences on the further development of children."

Zierer, who comes from the Catholic southern region of Bavaria,
said he was particularly concerned about children seeing crosses
turned the wrong way up in "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's
Stone."

"If a child is accompanied or if parents talk with their
child before the film then that might be alright, but otherwise a
six-year-old could come out and not know what is reality."

--------------

FARGO, N.D. (Reuters)
Monday November 19 9:11 AM ET

Witchcraft Fears Keep Kids From Harry Potter

A witchcraft controversy brewing in a North Dakota town forced a
local school to cancel a field trip to a screening of the new
Harry Potter movie on Friday.

About 100 students from Agassiz Middle School in Fargo were
slated to attend the opening day of the widely anticipated movie,
"Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone," which revolves
around the adventures of a young wizard in a world of nonmagical
mortals known as muggles.

All the students, mainly aged between 12 and 15, had parental
permission to attend the trip to a local movie house during
school hours.

But a few concerned parents and one local radio personality
successfully killed the trip after raising concerns about the
movie's depiction of witchcraft.

The fact that some consider witchcraft a religion, the protesters
said, meant that the school-led trip to the movie theater would
constitute a violation of the separation of church and state and
possibly lead to legal action.

"It's a little bizarre," said Fargo School
Superintendent David Flowers, who supported the field trip.
"We believe that we were on firm ground in letting the kids
go. But (the school) made the decision ... that they would just
as soon not be embroiled in a controversy."

Meanwhile in Memphis at least two Catholic schools said they were
keeping the series of "Harry Potter" books by author J.K.
Rowling out of their libraries because of the witches and
wizardry content.

Comment: Whilst these stories obviously
represent the extreme end of the spectrum of Christian concerns
regarding this harmless literary figure, it is nevertheless
amazing to me that it should exist at all. But be in no
doubt that it has nothing to do with fears about the supernatural
or magic or any such matters; it is all about the fear of
competition for the souls, minds and imaginations of the young.
No-one is their right mind could possibly hold up the Bible as a
literary work that the young should read so as to avoid contact
with the "darker" side of reality. It is all
about the desire to control the direction in which children take
their imagination. It is all about the desire to suffocate
that imagination with the pillows of pre-established images and
beliefs. Religion is suffocating to any child; it does not
speak to nor does it encourage the enormous capacity the young
mind has for conjuring a world in which to play and consider
possibilities. What kind of a person wants to suffocate
their children?

EDITORIAL

-
Marriage, Love and Genius -

by David Quinn

Is marriage compatible with genius? In other words, is it
possible for a husband or a wife to cultivate genius? I'd say
that it would be very, very unlikely.

As every married couple knows, the secret to ensuring a happy,
successful marriage is compromise, and compromise is the
death of genius. Each partner has to take into account the
feelings and wishes of the other, while frequently neglecting or
suppressing his own inclinations, and has to submerge his own
individuality for the sake of the "team". This alone
kills off genius, not to mention all the other things which
invariably attend marriage - the career, the children, the
mortagage, the possessions, the networking, and all the other
equally useless distractions.

The cultivation of genius requires maximum freedom and
independence. One needs to have the complete freedom to follow
one's thoughts wherever they lead, to put into practice the
fruits of one's thinking, and to go against the grain in an
attempt to develop the art of perfect truthfulness. But this is
virtually impossible if one is always having to consider the
happiness of one's spouse and the well-being of the marriage in
general.

No genius that I know of has ever married. True, Socrates did
marry, but to his credit he neglected his wife and children and
did not provide for them. They were left to fend for themsleves
in poverty while he spent his days and nights practising the
Truth, so I can forgive him his youthful lapse of judgment.

I personally make it a rule to avoid married people. I never let
them into my house if I can possibly help it, and if one of them
ever reaches out to touch me I automatically recoil in horror as
if being touched by a leper. For there is one thing which is
common to virtually all married people and it is this: they stink
of death. Their every pore reeks of the mediocrity and
soullessness which grips this world.

In short, marriage is a good yardstick for measuring one's
potential for genius. If you're not utterly repulsed by it, then
your future looks very bleak indeed.

There is also a
lot to be said for comparing love to a drug. Marriage and heroin-addiction
are very similar when you think about it. For example:

When a man first
starts injecting himself with herion he experiences great
euphoria, but over time his daily fixes become less euphoric and
more mundane.

When a man first falls in love he also experiences great
euphoria, only for it to fade away to the the level of the
mundane (usually not long after the wedding ceremony).

-----

The heroin addict
is required to go out and commit crimes every day in order to pay
for his habit.

The married man has to go out every day and slave away at some
mind-numbing job in order to pay for his sexual/emotional fix.

----

The heroin-addict
becomes violently aggressive the moment someone attempts to deny
them their fix.

The married man becomes violently aggressive the moment he sees
another man make advances upon his wife.

----

When a heroin-addict
is denied his fix he experiences great suffering associated with
withdrawal symptoms.

When a man's wife leaves him for another man, he experiences
great suffering associated with withdrawal symptoms.

----

And so on.

From "The
Lankavatara Sutra"

There are four kinds of knowledge:
Appearance-knowledge, relative-knowledge, perfect-knowledge, and
Transcendental Intelligence. Appearance-knowledge belongs to the
ignorant and simple-minded who are addicted to the notion of
being and non-being, and who are frightened at the thought of
being unborn. It attaches itself to the multiplicity
of objects; it is characterized by attainability and
accumulation; it is subject to birth and destruction.

Relative-knowledge belongs to the
mind-world of the philosophers. It arises from the mind's ability
to consider the relations which appearances bear to each other
and to the mind considering them; it arises from the mind's
ability to arrange, combine and analyse these relations by its
powers of discursive logic and imagination, by reason of which it
is able to peer into the meaning and significance of things.

Perfect-knowledge belongs to the
world of the Bodhisattvas who recognize that all things are but
manifestations of mind; who clearly understand the emptiness, the
unbornness, the egolessness of all things, and who have entered
into the truth of imagelessness. Perfect-knowledge
differentiates the Boddhisattva stages and is the pathway and the
entrance into the exalted state of self-realization of Noble
Wisdom. To those who realize this knowledge, the world
is like a vision and a dream, it is like the birth and death of a
barren-woman's child; to them, there is nothing evolving and
nothing disappearing.

The wise who cherish Perfect-knowledge
may be divided into three classes: disciples, masters and Arhats. Common
disciples continue to cherish the notion of individuality and
generality; masters rise from common disciples when, forsaking
the error of individuality and generality, they still cling to
the notion of an ego-soul by reason of which they go off by
themselves into retirement abnd solitude. Arhats arise
when the error of discrimination is realized and a "turning-about"
takes place within the deepest consciousness. Mind,
thus emancipated, enters into perfect self-realization of Noble
Wisdom.

But if you assert that
there is such a thing as Noble Wisdom, it no longer holds good,
because anything of which something is asserted thereby partakes
of the nature of being and is thus characterized with the quality
of birth. The very assertion: "All things are
unborn" destroys the truthfulness of it. The same
is true of the statements: "All things are empty", and,
"All things have no self-nature" - both are
untenable when put in the form of assertions. All
assertions and negations, being thought-constructions, are unborn. Even
the assertion that Universal Mind and Noble Wisdom are Ultimate
Reality, is a thought-construction and therefore unborn. As
"things", there is no Universal Mind, no Noble Wisdom,
no Ultimate Reality. The insight of the wise who move about
in the realm of imagelessness and its solitude is pure.
That is, for the wise all "things" are wiped away and
even the state of imagelessness ceases to exist.

- Knowing me;
knowing you -

Irena: Seems to me, enlightenment that can be
measured by another, an observer, is like the tip of the iceberg
to the totality of the observed's totality, including of course
his/her degree of enlightenment. Particularly on an email list.

Matt
Gregory: Well, I
think a person's actions/speech pretty much expose that person
for what they are. I don't think you can hide who you are from a
perceptive person.

David
Quinn: What Irena
says is true in a sense, but only for women. A woman has no ego,
no intregrated personality, no logical coherence in her mental
life aside from what has been inserted into her by men. Her mind
is largely made up of discontinuous thoughts held loosely
together by feelings and random association. Because of this,
there is much truth to the assertion that a woman's speech
doesn't reflect what is going on inside her.

A woman's mind is to her speech what chaos is to the organized
forms it spits out. And just as you can't discern the nature of
chaos from the forms it produces, neither can you discern a
woman's mind from what she says.

By contrast, a man does have an ego and an integrated
personality, and thus everything he says is an
expression of his values and character. He can therefore be read
like an open book by the perceptive observer, whereas a woman's
mind is almost entirely opaque. (On the other hand, once you
understand the essentially random, egoless nature of the woman's
mind, you automatially gain a complete understanding of every
women who has ever lived. You don't need to listen a single thing
a woman says in order to understand her mind. Such a methodology
is irrelevant and completely misunderstands her nature.)

Even when a man is lying skilfully, he can be easily read,
because nothing he says is ever not tainted with his
beliefs and values. But a woman's mind always remains opaque,
even when she is speaking honestly and truthfully.

According to Otto Weininger, women have no spirituality in them
at all. He suggested that the well-known female mystics and
saints of the past were nothing more than hysterical women. Here
are some interesting snippets from his book "Sex and
Character" which touch on this subject. (The square brackets
contain page numbers) :

--

It is from nothing more nor less than the phenomenon of match-making
from which we may be able to infer most correctly the real nature
of woman. This desire to bring about an understanding between two
people is possessed by all women from their earliest childhood. [154]

The idea of pairing is the only conception which has positive
worth for women. The woman is the bearer of the thought of the
continuity of the species. The high value which she attaches to
the idea of pairing is not selfish and individual, it is super-individual,
and, if I may be forgiven the desecration of the phrase, it is
the transcendental function of woman.[158]

The breathless pleasure with which the various obstacles are
overcome, the feeling of disappointment at each thwarting of the
sexual purpose, is altogether womanish and unmanly; but it is
always present with woman. She is continually on the watch for
sexual developments, whether in real life or in literature. [155-156]

As a rule, the woman adapts herself to the man, his views become
hers, his likes and dislikes are shared by her, every word he
says is an incentive to her, and the stronger his sexual
influence on her the more this is so. Woman does not perceive
that this influence which man has on her causes her to deviate
from the line of her own development; she does not look upon it
as a sort of unwarrantable intrusion; she does not try to shake
off what is really an invasion of her private life; she is not
ashamed of being receptive; on the contrary, she is really
pleased when she can be so, and prefers man to mould her mentally.
She rejoices in being dependent, and her expectations from man
resolve themselves into the moment when she may be perfectly
passive.

But it is not only from her lover (although she would like that
best), but also from her father and mother, uncles and aunts,
brothers and sisters, near relations and distant acquaintances,
that a woman takes what she thinks and believes, being only too
glad to get her opinions ready made. [159]

A woman's thoughts and actions have no definite, independent
relation to things in themselves; they are not the result of the
reaction of her individuality to the world. They accept what is
imposed on them gladly, and adhere to it with the greatest
firmness. That is why woman is so intolerant when there has been
a breach of conventional laws. [159]

It is the universal passivity of womans nature which makes
her accept and assume man's valuations of things although these
are utterly at variance with her nature. The way in which woman
can be impregnated with the masculine point of view, the
saturation of her innermost thoughts with a foreign element, her
false recognition of morality, which cannot be called hypocrisy
because it does not conceal anything anti-moral, her assumption
and practise of things which in themselves are not in her realm,
are all very well if the woman does not try to use her own
judgment, and they succeed in keeping up the fiction of her
superior morality. [160]

One cannot artificially suppress and supplant one's real nature,
the physical as well as the other side, without something
happening. The hygienic penalty that must be paid for woman's
denial of her real nature is hysteria. [161]

Hysteria shows that untruthfulness, however far it may reach,
cannot suppress everything. By education or environment woman
adopts a whole system of ideas and valuations which are foreign
to her, or, rather, has patiently submitted to have them
impressed on her; and it would need a tremendous shock to get rid
of this strongly rooted psychical complexity, and to transplant
woman from that condition of intellectual helplessness which is
so characteristic of hysteria.

An extraordinary shock suffices to destroy the artificial
structure, and to place woman in the arena to undertake a fight
between her unconscious, oppressed nature, and her certainly
conscious but unnatural mind. The see-sawing which now begins
between the two explains the unusual psychic discontinuity during
the hysterical phase, the continual changes of mood, none of
which are subject to the control of a dominant, central,
controlling nucleus of individuality. It is extraordinary how
many contradictions can co-exist in the hysterical. Sometimes
they are highly intelligent and able to judge correctly and
keenly oppose hypnotism and so forth. Then, again, they are
excited by most trivial causes, and are most subject to hypnotic
trances. Sometimes they are abnormally chaste, at other times
extremely sensual.

All this is no longer difficult to explain. The absolute
sincerity, the painful love of truth, the avoidance of everything
sexual, the careful judgment, and the strength of will all these
form part of that spurious personality which woman in her
passivity has taken upon herself to exhibit to herself and to the
world at large. Everything that belongs to her original
temperament and her real sense form that other self,
that unconscious mind which can delight in
obscurities and which is so open to suggestion. [162]

The current opinion that woman is religious is equally erroneous.
Female mysticism, when it is anything more than mere
superstition, is either thinly veiled as in numberless
spiritualists and theosophists, or it is a mere passive and
unconscious acceptance of man's religious views which are clung
to the more firmly because of woman's natural disinclination for
them. The lover is readily transformed into a Saviour; very
readily (as is well known to be the case with many nuns) the
Saviour becomes the lover. All the great women visionaries known
to history were hysterical; the most famous, Santa Teresa, was
not misnamed the patron saint of hysteria. [168]

If woman's religiousness were genuine, and if it proceeded from
her own nature, she would have done something great in the
religious world; but she never has done anything of any
importance. [168]

Diablo: Inserted into her by men. Heh heh. A
woman seems to me to be just as much a construction of her
environment as a man. I don't believe that women are as you
describe. A pool of stored data, squirting here and there without
cause or provocation. Mere toys, meat puppets. At least, no more
so than men.

David Quinn: All things are a constitution of the
environment, but this doesn't mean that all things have identical
characteristics. A powder puff is as much a product of the
environment as a mighty oak.

Diablo: So you are saying women are chaotic. I
agree but only to say that men are equally so.

David Quinn: No, I wouldn't say that women's mind
are chaotic. I would describe them as "flowie" - that
is, constantly changing in an aimless fashion. Aside from the
flow, the organizing principle of their minds is partly emotional/biological
and partly what has been impregnated into them by masculine
consciousness. Logical thought barely exists inside them. If a
woman displays logical coherence in her words, you can be sure
that its ultimate source has been the words of past men in her
life, or from books, etc. Women don't think, they regurgitate.

Diablo: Someone taught me to think logically. I
learned my problem solving techniques from others and from books.
Should I have learned them myself?

David Quinn: The difference with men is that logical
reasoning becomes central to his thought-processes (even when he
is reasoning poorly), while with woman it is never more than an
adjunct. Men treat reason with a seriousness that is entirely
unknown to a woman. He has the utmost respect for logic, whereas
it is nothing for a woman to abandon logic at the drop of a hat.

A woman's relationship with logic is purely sexual in nature. It
either overwhelms her (via the words of another) or it doesn't
feature in her life at all.

Diablo: Every woman I know has a personality
and a desire to improve herself and her environment. They have
varying strategies but a similar goal.

David Quinn: It's been instilled into them by
society, by men. Self-improvement is a masculine goal which women
have mindlessly incorporated. Even then, it merely expresses
itself in the sexual field - in the desire for a more attractive
appearance, a more popular kind of personality, etc.

Diablo: And what is the difference between an
integrated and disintegrated personality?

David Quinn: The crucial factor is consciousness.
The mental contents of an intergrated personality are bound
together by consciousness in a way that doesn't occur in women.
An intergrated personality has far greater memory and reasoning
capacity, and a far greater sense of its own destiny. Everything
inside the mind of an intergrated personality is logically
connected together, even if it contains contradictions, and is
bound together by a central ego, whereas a woman's consciousness
consists of millions of isolated thought-forms and intuitions,
connected together only by emotions, random associations and the
masculine consciousness of those she has met in the past.

If there were no men in the world, then it is likely that the
mind of a woman would completely fall apart, and she would be
ruled entirely by her sexual nature.. She depends, for her
psychological centre, on men. Unless she had enough masculinity
inside her to form her own centre, her mind would degenerate into
a kind of formless insanity, and would so without her knowledge

Diablo: And why would women lack an ego?

David Quinn: It goes back to the circumstances of
our evolution. Men originally were the defenders of the tribe, as
well as its warriors, and thus evolved to assume the positions of
power and responsibility in society. Women had no need to develop
an ego because they had no responsibilities, apart from those
that were determined by men.

Also, men have selectively bred women over the millennia to be as
egoless as possible. A man doesn't want to snuggle up to a
competing ego at night. It wouldn't be enjoyable. It would cause
too much friction and suffering. He is looking for a comforting
refuge when he becomes intimate with a woman, not another rival.
He already gets enough rivalry out there in the world.

As a result, women's egos are undeveloped, much like how a young
child's ego is undeveloped. They are not entirely without ego,
just as they are not entirely without masculinity. But it is
debateable whether any woman in history has ever become masculine
enough to form an ego.

Diablo: When I think of ego, I think of the Id,
Ego, and Super Ego. I don't know what you mean by ego though.

David Quinn: In this instance, it means a
consciousness that is developed enough to relate everything it
experiences to a central idea. A person with an ego is in
conscious connection with everything he experiences, while the
egoless woman can barely relate what she experiences in the
present to what she experienced five minutes ago. She is
constantly changing from moment to moment, and so the person she
was five minutes ago has very little relationship to the person
she is now. The person with an ego, by contrast, retains the same
form throughout his experiences

Diablo: Women are as easy to read as men.
Posture, rhythm, eyes (where they look and pupil size), lip
fullness, hands, legs, breathing... It's all there. It speaks
loudly for anyone who knows what to listen for.

David Quinn: Sure, one can slot women into various
categories based on their appearance and behaviour. But that is
still on a very superficial level. It is like slotting dogs into
their various breeds. But whatever their differences, a dog still
remains a dog.

Diablo: Of course, you have diagnosed women as
opaque and thusly, excuse yourself from learning their individual
natures. Also, by claiming each woman is the same you absolve
yourself of any reason to dig deeper. Having found the truth, you
must feel quite satisfied.

David Quinn: Either that or you are immersing
yourself in the superficial complexities of women in order to
block out the knowledge of their essential nature. Most men would
be horrified if they knew the truth about their girlfriends and
wives.

Observations by Otto
Weininger

(taken from
"On Ultimate Things")

The highest expression of all morality: Be!

A person must act in such a way
that the whole of his individuality lies in each moment.

Only from within himself can a
person know the depth of the world; the interconnections of the
world lie in him.

The human being cannot even bear
to look into the sun - so weak and immature is he.

The distinguishing mark of all
that is human: seeking for reality. All
distinctions between people are established where reality is
sought and found.

Many a person believes that he has
become free of the one God, because he has pledged himself to
several others.

Life is a kind of voyage through
the space of the inner ego, naturally a voyage from a narrow
homeland to the most comprehensive, free, overview of the
universe.

Age is death, youth is life.
The greater a person is, the less he ages, and the less his will
gets weaker with age.

A person lives until he enters
either into the absolute or into nothingness. He, himself,
determines his future life in freedom: he chooses God or
nothingness. He abolishes himself, or he adapts himself to
eternal life. For him, a double progress is possible:
one toward eternal life (to perfect wisdom and holiness, to a
state fully adequate to the idea of the true and the good), and
one toward eternal annihilation. However, he
continually advances in one of those two directions; there is no
third.

The good aphorist must be able to
hate.

People can be divided into seekers
and priests, and there is much to be gained from this
division. The seeker searches, the priest informs.
The seeker searches above all for himself, the priest
unburdens himself above all to others. The seeker searches
his whole life long for himself, for his own soul; the priest's
ego is given from the outset as a presupposition of everything
else. The seeker is always accompanied by a feeling of
imperfection; the priest is convinced of the existence of
perfection.

Only seekers are vain (and sensitive).
For vanity arises from the need to find, and from the
feeling that one has not yet found - not yet found oneself. The
priest is not vain, he does not easily feel hurt, and had no need
for external recognition, because this support is not necessary
for him. On the other hand, he has a need for fame.
A presupposition of the need for fame is inner self-certainty; it
is his nature to offer his ego as perfect as possible for others,
and thus to connect himself to them. Fame is thus related
to sacrifice.

Sensuousness is what the priest descends to,
while the seeker wants to ascend from it to spirituality.
That is why the priest has a really strong relationship to
nature; for the priest comes from the spirit and tries to bring
the world in line with him. Everything should shine
brightly, like the flame within himself. The seeker,
on the other hand, much more than the priest, has a relationship
to society. He is a social being because he
seeks himself in others. Only the seeker stands in a deep
relationship to culture, to law, the state and morality.

The priest has revelation on his side, and
daylight is within him. The seeker strives upward towards
it, but is still blind. The priest is already in
alliance with the godhead; only he knows the mystical experience
(extreme seekers, like Kant, or even better Fichte, do not know
such things). The absolute, the divinity, is given to the
priest as a precondition, as a treasure or a pledge from
on high; it is given to the seeker as a value, as a goal.

Nietzsche was a seeker for a long time; only as
Zarathustra did he put on the priest's robes, and only now there
descend from the mountain those discourses which prove how much
certainty he has gained from the transformation. The
experiences of the priest (as seer!) are more intense
than those of the seeker; and that is why he is more sure of
himself. He feels himself to be the
chosen messenger from the sun, moon and stars, and only listens
in order to understand their language as fully as feels it his
duty.

GENIUS at a glance:

Faith is saying: I believe this, not
because I have been able to demonstrate this is so through a
rational, logical process, but because I want it to be so, so
badly that I can not accept that reality is not like this.
Or, I believe it because I read it in a book. I believe it
because someone told it to me. Faith is believing something
that you don't actually have reason to believe is true (since if
you had reason, you wouldn't need faith). Faith is the opposite
of truly thinking for yourself. Accepting that faith is actually
a good thing is the key nastiness that religions impose
on followers. Everything else flows from that corrupt idea.
If you can get someone to accept that someone else should do
their thinking for them, that they are not qualified to think for
themselves, then you can get them to accept anything. It's
surprisingly easy to convince people that faith is good.
Apparently, thinking for one's self is a responsibility people
are all too happy to give up. David Hodges

Nationalism has its foundation in ego.
The ego attaches itself to all kinds of things so as to reinforce
its reality, to ground itself in reality. Nationalism in
really no different than an allegiance to family, or one's street
or suburb, or one's city or State. We express this kind of
jingoism in a great many ways, all of which also create an "us
and them" mentality. Have you noticed how little an
attachment people have to humanity itself? Humanity as an
entity? This is because there is no "them", no
scope to build a contrast, nowhere for an attachment to really
"stick". If intelligent life were to be found on
Mars (speaking entirely hypothetically) and especially if there
was the perception of some potential "threat" from this
life, then all of a sudden you we see the arising of a "human
nationalism".

But this process of the ego attaching itself to
arbitrarily constructed groupings is delusional because it is
done in response to a sense of separation that does not exist in
the first place. Dan
Rowden

Some local school children in Brisbane recently
did an experiment to examine the nature of McDonald's food.
They placed a Mac cheese burger and a regular hamburger from a
diner in a seperate glass box for six months.
While the regular hamburger started going bad after three days
and quickly became a putrid mess, the cheese burger showed few
signs of decay, even after six months. Save for a covering
of mold, the shape of the burger was intact .......David Quinn

Regardless, the work of Weininger and Paglia
and others is not a condemnation of humans who were born female
in the way that, for example, the Taliban condemns women.
To the contrary, the works of Weininger and Paglia are attempts
to awaken the female to masculinity. No human being should
have to serve as sexual fodder for another. No human being
should have to compromise himself. No human being should be
required to wear a burka. No human being should be
subservient to another human being. All human beings should
be capable of standing on their own two feet. All human
beings should be self supporting. No human being should
have to beguile another into subsidizing him.

This is not misogyny but feminism in the pure
sense of the word. It is want for an ideal world. It
is want for autonomy. It is want for reality in lieu of
romance. It is want to remove from the feminine the chains
of delusion.

A woman is not a safe haven. Yet, she has
been used as such.

A woman is not a goddess. Yet, she has
been used as such -- and women have perpetuated this myth and
encouraged it.

Women claim to want freedom while perpetuating
their slavery.

One begins to understand why Weininger saw fit
to end his life at such a young age. It is disheartening to
recognize and comprehend the slavery imposed on life and to find
oneself at a loss for relief from it. Marsha Faizi

I'm no different to anyone else in this regard.
I remember when I was young (so much younger than today...) I
used to think every girl/woman that I was attracted to was, or
potentialy was, my soulmate. The funny thing is: how does one
determine who is a soul mate when your own nature is not static?
She whom you decide is your lifelong mate this week may become
the sort of person who shits you you tears the week thereafter.

I remember a line from a Sammy Davis Jnr song which goes
somehting like: "How can I be right for somebody else if I'm
not right for me?" I'm not usually one for quoting crappy
song lyrics but I think that line is applicable.

Who are we to drag someone into the chaos of our lives and call
it "love"? The other point I want to make about
entering into a love relationship with someone is the ethics of
acting in such a way as to ensure their future suffering. That
is, when you allow, or more to the point, encourage a person to
develop an egotistical attachment to you, you are necessarily
sowing the seeds of their future suffering, in that they will
suffer either for the fear of perhaps losing you, or for the
actual fact of losing you (when you leave or die).

Is it ethical to do such a thing merely for the sake of your own
egotistical benefit? Indeed, how many people even stop to
consider this dimension of their behaviour? Dan Rowden

What I find comical about the whole idea of
finding a "soul-mate" is how easily people seem to find
them. You would think that out of a world-wide population of six
billion, the chances of finding your perfect soul-mate were
exceedingly slim. And yet people everywhere seem to have the
knack of finding their one and only beloved in their local
neighbourhood or work-place or even the nearest bar. Quite
astounding when you think about it.

Many people would call this destiny, but I would be inclined to
call it desperation. All it requires is for the man and woman in
question to share one or two values for them to jump to the
conclusion that they are "soul-mates", and, in so
doing, block out the fact there is an enormous chasm between them.
It is only later, when they are married and the pleasures of love
no longer shine so brightly, that they see begin to see their
mistake. Which is when they start fighting. David Quinn

Disclaimer:
editorial opinions expressed in this publication are
those of its authors and do not, necessarily, reflect
the views of subscribers to Genius-L. Dialogues adapted from Genius-L and Genius
Forum have been edited for the purpose of brevity and clarity.
Certain spelling mistakes and typographical errors have been corrected
to preserve meaning.